Tag Archives: Saints

Today is Emily Dickinson’s birthday. She is 182 years old. Here is the poem that came to hand this morning.

#1228

So much of Heaven has gone from Earth
That there must be a Heaven
If only to enclose the Saints
To Affidavit given.

The Missionary to the Mole
Must prove there is a Sky
Location doubtless he would plead
But what excuse have I?

Too much of Proof affronts Belief
The Turtle will not try
Unless you leave him — then return
And he has hauled away

A birthday is the thing with feathers. So much to say now. I’ll try to encompass it all, as we move deeper into the winter dark. First an update: The weather is springy warm and humid. The Saints lost yesterday. The end of the world is nigh. Not necessarily because the Giants killed the pants off the Saints, 52 to 27. Yet, surely these facts must have some meaningful resonance with each other. I couldn’t help myself. I was depressed and declared that the dwindling days of the Mayan calendar and the Saints’ abysmal performance are energetically linked . . . somehow. Then it was time for dinner. Pizza and beer helped my mood. I also had to ask Geoff, “What spiritual lesson do we take from this game?” He hates spiritual lessons and would not answer. He was even more depressed than I was. After dinner, several hours after I asked the question, he did finally answer it. I’m paraphrasing here: The lesson is that however bad it feels when the Saints lose, it’s never so terrible that you cannot recover and look forward with some optimism, a little joy. Of course, by “forward” we mean next season, not the next game. This season is cooked. And that “look” will have to draw on the deepest stores of renewal and fundamental faith in the simple ideas: Onward, practice, figure it out, and try again. Try again. And then try again.

Now for the poem. Honest, I did choose this one at random. The Saints line jumped out on its own. The stanza at the end holds me. “Too much of Proof affronts Belief.” The literalness of the physical world diminishes our capacity to strive toward the fuller development of our Self. We won’t do it without that ever receding thing we call faith. (Faith in what, you ask? Oh, I don’t know—honor, dignity, fairness, goodness, that seamless connection on the long pass out of the shotgun, the poetry of beauty that works.) If the things we want to believe in announce themselves in the world as if produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, we’d scoff at these as too literal. Paradoxically something seems less spiritually True if we can see it as literally true.

So those things we believe in or have faith in—whatever it is, doesn’t have to be God—such ephemera make us get up in the morning and try to accomplish tasks greater than merely maintaining bodily existence. In order to draw this effort from us, these ephemera must remain slightly unknown, just beyond the limit of the mind’s capacity to comprehend. If these ephemera that ask for our faith appeared in concrete totality, so we could see all the sides, top and bottom, then we would not accept them as worthy of our faith. And the engine loses its drive to exist.

Emily plays with the mind’s ability to set its own impossible tasks. Human survival requires that we try for something that will never be realized. That’s the job that keeps our blood circulating. So this is not idle poetic meandering to formulate such ephemera as honor, dignity, fairness, goodness . . . the hope for that perfect long pass. These are deliberately elusive. Suggested without complete realization. (It takes imagination to love the Saints; you have to be able to see things that may never exist. Imagination feeds the human life force as much as pizza and beer.) The power of the unproven outcome to simulate our life force is counter-intuitive, but it works. Now, you’d want to build a house on a solid four-square foundation, such that you can see all the physical aspects and know it has structural integrity, in order to trust that foundation to hold up your house. Conversely to build a life, you’d start with a foundation made from a concept (honor goodness dignity) that never fully reveals itself. You must place your faith here without compete proof that it exists. Human existence rests on the continuing puzzle of unverifiable existence.

As we move toward the best season of the year, Emily’s birthday on December 10th, the news is good. Ford in his Flivver and all is right with the world. The Saints are 9 and 3. Last night, Patrick Robinson flew like a bat out of hell to block that field goal attempt by the Lions. A thing of beauty. I’m happy with where we are at the moment. Although the Titans could give us some trouble next week.

Despite the cheery season, Emily returns to her favorite subject.

#976, c. 1864

Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
“Dissolve” says Death — The Spirit “Sir
I have another Trust” —

Death doubts it — Argues from the Ground —
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.

Here Death is the argument between the matter of the earth and the ghost in the machine. Death gets to say something, but Death owes its existence to the tension between the physical outcome of organic degeneration and our imagination’s stubborn refusal to give in to that. So much spirit talk is born out of sheer obstinacy.

My focus goes to the line where she characterizes Death as a dialogue, not an entity, although Death does assume form and speech in the poem. Death is a conversational exchange. It takes two to create Death. An essential split in our nature is where Death emerges as a character with something to say. Without that duality within ourselves, we don’t have anything to talk about. Or rather we have no one to talk to . . . No dialogue, no Death. Only changing form. Skin, hair, bones, teeth, dust, mud . . . fertilizer. And then some other form.

My own conversation with Death has been lively off and on since I was fourteen years old, both as a theoretical concept and as a more brute consideration. This past September is a good example. If you want my advice, don’t get cancer. It puts a damper on things.

All right, I’m being glib. That’s how we roll in my tribe, especially when considering Death. The way to get through life with any dignity is to act the fool. Afraid of Death? Grab him by the throat and crack wise. You’ll never make a friend of Death. But do make him your straight man.

For the record: I’m not dying. Not yet, at least. But I had an interesting brush with malignant melanoma. A bad mole on my left arm. The good news is that we found it at an early stage, so the surgeon removed it all in one swoop, along with a large portion of my skin. No need for further treatment, no chemo or sentinel node biopsy. I will have to be on high-alert for other bad moles, but for now I am in the clear.

Those are the clinical facts, over and done with in the space of a month. The waves that move out from those facts continue to roll up against my thoughts, and I expect will do so for the rest of my life, which I hope will be a long one. My sister who is a survivor of stage III breast cancer has talked about “the gift of cancer.” My friend Shaun who is also a melanoma survivor used the same phrase. They were talking about cancer as a great awakener. That it clarified how they had been neglecting some essential part of themselves. They said cancer gave them the power to love their own lives and act accordingly.

So I have been looking for the gift of cancer in my medical adventure. It’s here. What great material. I can run my engine on this for a long while. And I’m not done yet. Not by any means.

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany and the 599th birthday of our patron Saint Jeanne d’Arc. Epiphany babies often have an aura of destiny about them. As a birth placement, this day can be almost literally brilliant. According to the Christ myth, today the light of the world appears to those who have been seeking it. Those who might believe in it. I’m going to celebrate this evening with the Krewe de Jeanne d’Arc which will parade through the Vieux Carre and end at the golden statue of the Maid of Orleans near the Market. I’ll give you a full report tomorrow. Maybe. If I’m not carried away by some errant tide of joy. That could happen. You never know.

In honor of her soul sister Jeanne, Emily sent this note from the dark.

#1323, ca. 1874

I never hear that one is dead
Without the chance of Life
Afresh annihilating me
That mightiest Belief,

Too mighty for the Daily mind
That tilling its abyss,
Had Madness, had it once or twice
The yawning Consciousness,

Beliefs are Bandaged, like the Tongue
When Terror were it told
In any Tone commensurate
Would strike us instant Dead

I do not know the man so bold
He dare in lonely Place
That awful stranger Consciousness
Deliberately face —

There is so much in this poem that I can’t hold it all at once. I’ll try to swim a straight line through it. My first response is to observe the similarities between Jeanne d’Arc and Emily Dickinson. They were both precocious, neurasthenic young girls with talents far exceeding their society’s ability to appreciate. Both were caught in a time that could not comprehend a woman of any age who possessed the power that each wielded in her own way.

Both, I’d argue here, were “afflicted” with consciousness. By that I mean that these two were both missing a layer or two of the usual protection (that “bandage”) that most of us carry around with us. The layers that shield us from a too intimate knowledge of ourselves or our consciousness. These two could not escape or ignore the experience of awareness. Most mortals can’t survive without ignoring their own consciousness. Em alludes to this protection in the line: “Too mighty for the Daily Mind”. A lesser sort born with Emily’s raw openness to the eternity within would fall into that “Madness.” No one sinks into the darkness behind her own eyes with any real willingness. It’s usually a forced step. Emily is the one with the curiosity and the courage to go there as a regular practice. And then write about it. Maybe that writing spared her from the madness. She was angling slant-wise toward this when she wrote “The Truth must dazzle gradually/ Or every man be blind —” The fact of conscious existence, our ability to be aware of our awareness, is too excruciating to dwell on in any direct or lengthy manner. For Emily, the most excruciating part, is her ability to hold awareness of life beyond death.

I’ll warrant that Jeanne wondered if she was going mad, as well. Both of these extraordinary girls were shocked, dazzled, and then finally drunk like madwomen on their own talent. Their power to “see”. Both had the sight or visions, which of course, according to the contractual terms of magical power, comes with a big responsibility. The difference between them is that Jeanne left the safe anonymity of her family and went out into the world to become a warrior of enormous political influence. While our little brown sparrow, Emily stayed home and drove herself deeper inward. Her vision bored infinitely into that mustard seed, her kingdom of Heaven.

Emily’s power exploded onto the page in private. “My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun —” She knew what she was sitting on—an atomic bomb of awareness, her own consciousness. Maybe it was out of compassion for her society that she withheld herself from public view. If she had unleashed her vision, she might have brought a nation to its knees (like Jeanne), and she might have been torn to pieces for her crime of greatness (like Jeanne). So a little of both. Pity for the ignorant society she was given at birth. And a healthy dose of self-preservation.

Who can say what was the better path? Jeanne changed the tide of history and died in agony before her 20th birthday. No one got to see Emily’s iconoclastic poems in her life time, but she was granted a long career, made good use of her time, and died as quietly as she lived. I guess we need both of them.

The gift I receive from Emily is a trapdoor and an invitation. She lifts the cover from the opening and points into the darkness. Readers like me may descend, floating on a dark wave, comfortable, room temperature. There limits melt and open toward the infinite unfolding that lies just outside our peripheral vision. Emily shows us how to turn and see deeply behind our own eyes. That loss of solid space/time boundaries might scare us back toward front and center. But no. It’s okay to follow Emily’s directive. She’s gone there first. We don’t have to be afraid.